January Miscellany

Nathaniel's eyes seemed to have turned from blue to hazel.  What do you think?

Nathaniel is walking a lot now, but he will still drop to his knees and crawl if he wants to get somewhere fast.  He is getting faster and steadier on his feet.

He is an even pickier eater than he used to be; he will no longer eat peas.  He does like to eat dinosaurs, though.

He likes his new towel from Grandma Jane.  So snuggly!

Megan has had a few temper tantrums lately, and the last time I snapped a photo.  She didn't like having her picture taken at all, but it did help distract her from her tantrum.  I don't know that what she does can accurately be called a tantrum anymore, maybe it is more like a pouting spell.

The girls got into a snowball fight with Nathaniel before all our snow melted.  He thought it was great fun!

The girls built a "pool" in our bedroom and went swimming a few days ago.  They practiced the backstroke and the front crawl and had all kinds of fun.  Nathaniel joined them for a few minutes, but he was mostly interested in knocking the walls of the pool down.

Amelia's Christmas Break Journal

Amelia's homework over winter break was to write in a journal every day.  We expanded the book to cover all her days off, since we took her out of school two days to go down to Glen Carbon.  She was supposed to write about her favorite part of each day; here's what she chose to write about.  I have copied her writing exactly  :)

Saturday, December 20: Today after my family ate lunch we walked around inside the capitl.  We saw a picsher of the capitl and we got to see what was on top of Ms. freedoms head. (added by Marcie - it's a badger!)

Sunday, December 21: Today my family drove to my grandma and grandpa's house.  Well we were driving I lisened to a audio book.  We stoped at McDonlds for dinner.

Monday, December 22: Today my family and my grandma and grandpa went to a magic house.  My favorite place in the magic house was the magic tree house exibit.  I dressed up like Annie from thanksgiving on thursday.

Tuesday, December 23: Today me Megan Nate Mommy Daddy Grandma and Grandpa went to the botanical garden in St. Louis.  At the botanical garden we saw lots of winter scenes, we also saw some trains.  It was fun!

Wednesday, December 24: Today me Daddy Grandpa and Grandma went to church with Aunt Anna Uncle Dan and Abby.  Megan could not go becus she was sick.  After church we went to Aunt Anna Uncle Dan and and Abby's house for Dinner.  When we got home we left out food for Santa claus and his reindeer!

Thursday, December 25: Today I had lots of fun!  My favorite presents were a American girl doll from Mommy and Daddy and a Lego friends cruise ship from Grandma and Grandpa.  My family gave granma a purple robe.  It was so soft!

 Friday, December 26: Today we had to leave Grandma and Grandpas house.  I was soooo sad to leave thar house becas I had soooo much fun!  But I had fun in the car anyway!  I listened to the boxcar children The Hockey Mystery audio book.  (added by Marcie - Both Elsa's were trying to help Ben drive the car in the Bloomington Cracker Barrel parking lot)

Saturday, December 27: Today I could not wait untill Daddy ate brektfast so we could build my lego friends cruise chip . It was so cool!

Sunday, December 28: Tonight was movie night.  We watched Barbie and the island Princess.  Today we also went ice skating.  It was so fun!  I can go around by myself.  (added by Marcie - Ben took them ice skating while I stayed home with Nathaniel, so I don't have any photos)

Monday, December 29: Today was not very exciting.  I played with Aiden outside on my playset while Megan and Mommy were at the library.  I also read some boxcar children books.

Tuesday, December 30: Today we drove to our other grandma and grandpa's house.  On the way thar we stopped to play at our cusins natalie and noah's house to play.  Me and Noah drew invencins.  After that me megan natalie and noah played pirit penguins. (added by Marcie - Amelia's invention is a moving cat on wheels that has eight arms and rooms where you can meet God and the president.)

Wednesday, December 31: Today we celabratid christmas again.  I could not wait.  I also got to play with Noah and Natalie again.  I got a Frozen night gown and Frozen slippers.

 Thursday, January 1: Today was so fun!  We got to eat monkey bread for brekfist.  My favorite part was getting to watch movies all day.  My favorite movie we watched was the boxcar children 1.  We wore our pjs on all day.

Friday, January 2: Today was so fun.  Me megan and mommy went on a exploring walk and took some picchers.  Some of the picshers are in the pocet.  We pretended to be Louis and clark the explorers.'

Saturday, January 3: Today I played with Aiden.  Today I also played Frozen slides battle ship clue and some other games.  My favorite game we played was a sofia the first.

Sunday, January 4: Today me and Megan played in the snow.  We ate a lot of snow.  When we got inside we got to have some hot chocolet.

Her teacher wrote "I'm so glad you had such a fun break and read a lot!  Thanks for including the pictures!"

New Years Walk in the Woods

It was 30 degrees yesterday, so I dragged the girls outside for a walk.  Initially, Megan was whiny about having to go outside, but she ended up having such a good time exploring that we stayed out for over two hours.  It was so nice to be able to walk around wherever we wanted without having to worry about snow, or mud, or frostbite.  Nathaniel joined us for the first part of our walk, but once the girls decided to keep exploring, Ben took him inside and put him down for a nap.

We started out picking up litter along the bike trail, happily finding a discarded plastic bag to collect all our trash.  After we followed the litter closer to the prairie grass, we ended up finding trampled paths that we could follow around the pond and into the copse of trees.  Turns out we were following a deer path:

Megan was especially good at keeping her eye out for poop, and even noticed how different some of the kinds looked.  I couldn't tell what all the poop was, though we did notice that one animal had eaten an awful lot of corn.

We ended up walking across the frozen creek, which couldn't have been more than 6" deep.  The girls took the opportunity to do a little bit of skating.  When we came across some ice that started making cracking sounds, we headed up the other bank to do more exploring.

 While we were pushing through tangles of sticks and branches, Amelia said that we were exploring just like Lewis and Clark.  She was very excited about the thought of that (never mind that I could still see houses).  We discovered some beautiful ice crystals, mosses, and lichens while we were exploring.

Then we tramped through the prairie on the other side of the street, heading up to the sneaky back way path.  The girls collected a few pinecones, and Megan found a good walking stick.

 Then we went to go see if the pond was frozen, and it was!  So we carefully stepped out onto the ice and discovered that it was frozen solid - and plus, it's no more than a foot deep.  Towards the edge, the ice was so clear that we could see the cat tail stalks and leaves lying under the surface.

We found two small areas that were surrounded by cat tail stalks; the girls each claimed one as their own private skating pond.

It was really a beautiful day!

We walked about a quarter of the way around the pond before we turned back.  We discovered all kinds of interesting things, including this poor dead frozen fish buried in the ice.  The girls were fascinated with the fish.

There were all kinds of interesting ice formations, including this large concentric ring of cloudy ice that the girls thought was really cool, and the multiple layers of stacked air bubbles that I thought were beautiful.  I laid down on the ice to take the second photo, and the girls thought I was crazy.

We heard some geese honking and saw this large V of geese flying directly north.  Stupid geese.

And then we walked back towards our house following the creek so the girls could do some more skating.  

I was ready to go home because my nose was getting cold, but the girls begged to stay out longer.  So I told them we could stay out a few more minutes as long as they sang a song while they were skating on the ice.  So here's part of the song they made up.

We got a half inch of snow last night, and are expected to have bitterly cold temperatures most of this week, so it was wonderful that we could get in our exploring walk before the weather turns back to normal.  (It's funny how much longer and more willingly the girls will walk if I say we are exploring, rather than walking or hiking.)